Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(65)

She admonished India in a low voice and whispered to the redheaded girl, “I’m so sorry—”

“It’s all right,” the girl said. She offered her hand to India without any hesitation. India slid her chubby palm into the teen’s and then, impulsively, kissed the back of her hand.

“India,” Lin said, horrified. “Let’s go have a talk outside.”

“Bless you,” whispered the teen girl to India as her mother dragged her off, her expression blissful and vague.

“Why don’t we just go to a Q and A!” one of the book sellers said with the bright tone that sounded fine and meant nothing is fine.

As the booksellers began to solicit questions from the children (“How old are you?” “Is Clancy based on a real person?” “Do you have any dogs?” “What are their names?”), some of the other children cozied up to the teen girl, leaning on her or touching her leg or, like India, clutching her hand. They were far more transfixed by her than by Morgenthaler.

Morgenthaler’s voice was rising and getting less jolly. “Actually, Maria—did you say your name was Maria? The reason why there are dolls for Henderson and not for Skunkboy is because of a drawn-out legal battle for merchandising rights because it turns out you need to get yourself a lawyer who’s not sleeping with your spouse if you want good—What, you have something to say about the way I run my events?”

This last statement seemed to be directed toward the old-man costume.

Morgnthaler wound up and punched the head right off the old-man costume.

There was a moment of silence as the old-man head flew off, followed by an equal and opposing measure of sound as it careened into the seated children.

Morgenthaler regarded all of this with a disheveled look before hurling himself at the headless body.

Chaos ensued. More mascots were struck. The stuffed chair managed to gallop into the frontmost row of seated children. A parent was slapped. Picture books flew through the air, pages rustling like injured birds. There was fur stuck to Morgenthaler from one of the costumes. His inner child—a tiny anarchist, a miniature id-monster—was screaming to be free.

Everything was anarchy, except for the red headed teen girl standing in the back of the crowd.

“Kill your dreams now, children!” Morgenthaler shrilled. “Kill them before New York gets to them and mutates them like … like …”

The squid suit dragged him into the back.

After they had all gone—the children, the parents, the booksellers, the publicist, the mascots—Morgenthaler shuffled back out into his gallery and stood in the afternoon light. The gallery was an enormous concrete and glass space now that everyone was gone. His phone was buzzing. He was sure it was his agent. He did not want to talk to his agent.

He looked up and realized he was not alone in the gallery. A teen girl remained. She stood next to a swirling 3-D piece that he had offered to represent because he didn’t understand it. She had red hair and looked nothing like his estranged wife, but suddenly he was reminded of what it was like to find one of her hairs on his clothing. It was not a pleasant feeling.

He thought he had locked the door.

“The event’s over,” he said. “It’s all over.”

“I’m looking for Hennessy,” she said.

“What?”

She didn’t repeat herself. “I believe that you can help me.”

Morgenthaler couldn’t even help himself. He’d tried to open a bottle of sparkling water just five minutes ago to drown his sorrows and had found the lid too difficult to get off.

“I don’t know any Hennessy,” he said.

The girl pointed to a painting on the wall. “But you must. Hennessy painted that.”

She was pointing at a painting called River Scene. The artist’s name—Joe Jones—was in the corner, as was a date: 1941.

“Kid,” Morgenthaler said, “that’s a sixty-thousand-dollar painting from, like, a hundred years ago. Joe’s dead. I don’t know who you’re looking for. Ask me something else.”

She scrutinized his expression, then rubbed her elbow softly, absently. “Can I … stay here?”

“What?”

“Just for tonight.” She gestured to the chic couch close to River Scene. “Please.”

Okay, she was homeless. Things made sense to him now. The publicist had said something about homeless people just the other day, but he couldn’t remember what. He wondered if he wasn’t a good listener.

“There’s shelters,” he told the girl. Probably there were shelters. This seemed like a thing that happened in cities, and this was a city.

“I need to stay someplace without people.”

She was not crying, but she was twisting her hands fast in the way Morgenthaler knew usually preceded tears. He hoped she didn’t actually cry because then he would cry; he had always been both a sympathetic puker and crier.

“You can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry. It wouldn’t be right. There’s valuable stuff here.”

He expected her to protest again, but she went to the door gently, without another word. When he opened the door, he felt a rush of warm air from the street, strange in this weather. The door closed behind her. He locked it.

She would be all right, he thought. Probably. Right?